


Harleen (2019) is a vaguely interesting mess.

by ArgentNoelle



Series: Meta/Essays [6]
Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types, Batman: The Animated Series
Genre: Critique, F/M, Feminist Themes, Gen, Good Harleen Quinzel, Harleen 2019, Harleen Quinzel Backstory, Meta, Minor Pamela Isley/Harleen Quinzel, No ship bashing, POV Harleen Quinzel, Protective Harleen Quinzel, Psychiatrist Harleen Quinzel, Queer Character, Rants, Sad Harleen Quinzel, comic review, this is a review/meta not a story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-09
Updated: 2021-02-09
Packaged: 2021-03-15 16:55:31
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,752
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29317485
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArgentNoelle/pseuds/ArgentNoelle
Summary: What it says on the tin, basically. I read Harleen a while ago. I kind of enjoyed it, but it annoyed me a lot. For some reason I decided to write about it now.
Relationships: Joker (DCU)/Harleen Quinzel
Series: Meta/Essays [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/494755
Comments: 8
Kudos: 1





	Harleen (2019) is a vaguely interesting mess.

There are a few ways Joker is usually portrayed as a villain. In some, he is just a queer villain. (most golden and silver age comics, the Arkham games, The Dark Knight Returns). Sometimes his queerness and love for Batman is the Reason he’s Evil (Batman: Death of the Family & Endgame). Other times, his queerness and love for Batman is his saving grace and tie to humanity (Europa; Batman: Last Knight on Earth; The Lego Batman Movie). And then… there are those stories that act like he’s straight. That’s _Harleen_ (2019). And besides the ending, it’s what most annoyed me about the series.

We see very quickly in Batman: The Animated Series that you can have Joker/Harley while not pretending either one of them is straight. BTAS is also where it’s first implied that Harley & Ivy are in a long-term relationship (“Harley and Ivy” “Gotham Knights”). Another series that manages to pull this off is the Arkham games, which has Joker/Harley, Joker/Batman, & Harley/Ivy; (though it gets weirdly overshadowed by probably the oddest pairing ever, which was Batman/Ivy.)

Now I’m going to mostly be comparing Joker & Harley in _Harleen_ to Joker & Harley from Batman: The Animated Series. For one thing, because that’s where the ship was first introduced. For another, I just think that’s where Joker & Harley was best & most interestingly played out. And lastly because _Harleen_ is a Harley Quinn origin story, so we’re going to get comparisons to BTAS as a matter of course.

_Harleen_ takes an interesting look into Harley’s headspace as she starts treating Joker and goes through her fall into villainy. Šejić expands upon the original Harley origin story, “Mad Love” but doesn’t change the basic premise. Harleen tries to treat Joker, but instead falls in love with him, and ends up inspired to becoming the supervillain Harley Quinn.

From the very beginning of the story, Šejić has made changes to Harleen’s motivations. While in “Mad Love” it’s implicated that Harleen was drawn to Joker from the start because he was a high profile case and she wanted to write a “tell-all” to fuel her career, Sejic adds an actual desire to do good to Harley’s originally self-focused motivation. Now, Harleen has a theory that she’s convinced will revolutionize Gotham’s mental system and open up treatments: she thinks that people who previously had empathy can lose it due to prolonged trauma, and wants to prove it through case studies using the worst of the worst: Arkham inmates.

The first real visual of Joker and Harley comes early on, because the frame story is Harleen telling you, the reader, what happened to her. It’s a full page of Joker and Harley supposedly dancing (they don’t look at all like they’re dancing, I have to say; more like posed figures) and in the background, there are shattered panels featuring her breakdown.

I’m not fond of the artistic rendition of Harley’s classic outfit here. Her jester’s hat “ears” are weirdly elongated, both floppy and hornlike, and the way she’s standing is very male-gaze to the extent that she’s doing odd contortions just so you can see her breast and crotch area, and her outfit has a weird, bulgy spray-painted look. Obviously titillation in comics is nothing new, especially for female characters, but this example particularly annoys me because it’s in a comic that otherwise takes a “realistic” view of the character, with a de-emphasis on usual comic weirdness, and a focus on character psychology. Plus, the fact that Harleen gets objectification-panels when she’s in costume (compared to mostly upfront panels otherwise) creates a really uncomfortable association of her transformation from Harleen to Harley Quinn being not just as a transformation from a good guy to a bad guy, but from a real woman to a fetish object. Here’s the thing. In BTAS, Harley played with this—occasionally and knowingly (think the scene where she sings to the gangsters in “Harlequinade”)—and the _knowingly_ is the important. In _Harleen_ , a story that’s supposedly from Harleen’s perspective, it’s already clear that the story is… not quite from Harleen’s perspective.

And then there’s Joker. I have to say, I’m sad. He’s wearing probably the most boring outfit in existence. The only concession to his usual color scheme is a purple dress shirt under a plain black suit without any decoration on it. There’s not even a tie. He’s even wearing a black belt over his black suit pants. The gloves are gone too. Instead of classic gangly self, he’s very “swoon-worthy action-romance hero” which is kind of fine, since Harley is swooning over him, but when you meet him in person, he’s going to look exactly the same way. Okay, he’ll have black suspenders, but that’s the only difference. Yeah, and he doesn’t wear lipstick even once.

Harleen runs into Joker at night in Gotham when she ends up by chance too close to an exploding building that was probably all Joker’s fault. Joker almost kills her, but stops, and Harleen doesn’t know why. There’s a short scene of Batman and Joker fighting, completely devoid of Joker’s usual flirtatious taunts, which culminates in a fight in a recessed fountain that plays out roman-coliseum style, right down to the spellbound crowd watching from above.

The offhand mention of Harley sleeping her way through college in “Mad Love” becomes treated a little more seriously, with Harleen’s fling with one of her professors dogging her future career; now she has to constantly suffer from people knowing what she did and disdaining her (because of course they blame her). It was an interesting change, though not much was done with it.

Speaking of how the Joker is portrayed, when he’s brought into Arkham he’s strapped to a wheelchair, sitting center-frame in a position that’s a lot more powerful than, say, the way he’s brought into the asylum in the Arkham games, with its upright metal gurney thing.

Harley’s interviews with the other criminals don’t go well. She puts off talking to Joker. Harley becomes sleep deprived, and desperate that she’s not going to be able to prove her ideas. She views tapes of Joker telling story after fake story to his previous doctors, and then a tape taken when he was being captured one time, where he seems to say something that speaks to her theory, and Harley realizes she’s going to have to talk to him.

There’s an interesting reversal in this comic of “The Killing Joke”—Harleen, here, basically has the idea that an ordinary person could be driven to madness. But instead of Joker playing out the pathos of the “one bad day”, he’s going to be presented as a manipulator. And even though Harley is right in her general theory, and both she and Harvey Dent will end up epitomizing it, Joker’s going to be cut off from that realization. Harley’s never going to prove if she was right about Joker _even to herself_. (I think it would have been really interesting to have a story with pathos for both Joker & Harley, which I don’t think has ever been done. Either it’s ‘feel sorry for Joker’ time [the pinnacle of that probably being “Streets of Gotham”], or ‘feel sorry for Harley’ time, but never _both_.)

In BTAS Harley didn’t have anything to prove, she just wanted to be famous and Joker made her famous, so for Joker to be a complete monster and Harley to be in love with him anyway can be a delusion that doesn’t undermine her character as a whole. In _Case Study_ Harley is able to prove that Joker is only feigning madness, though the public doesn’t believe her after she becomes Harley Quinn, and she thinks that’s hilarious. Either one of those storylines can hold Harleen falling for Joker along with Harleen being good at her job. This story undermines it. Neither does it convincingly portray Harleen as manipulated, the way _Injustice: Gods Among Us_ did, with did a very nuanced and interesting portrayal of Harley trying to find herself again in the aftermath of Joker’s death. This story stays firmly in the middle of “dark romance” without ever settling on a definitive portrayal of Harley as anything other than idealistic, naïve, and tormented.

In chapter 2, Harleen and Joker play out a bit of _Silence of the Lambs_ , which is kind of fun, and the visual representation of Joker takes a turn toward sexy. The first image of him he’s only in an undershirt, smiling, hair falling over his face and his arm up just hiding the edge of his smile, and he looks kind of flirty. Also murderous. We flash to forward to Joker outside of Arkham, interacting with a mostly off-panel Harley Quinn, and he’s still wearing the exact same black suit and purple shirt outfit as before. Off-panel Harley Quinn hits someone with a bat and then is shown on-panel and… like, I don’t even know how to list everything that’s wrong with this image. But I have to try. She’s in a very skimpy version of her classic outfit, which honestly isn’t a distasteful design in and of itself. But she’s screaming, and angry, her legs braced to either side of a dead guy, her bat spraying blood in the middle in a very phallic sense.

There’s no Harley Quinn playfulness to the image and there’s no self-awareness. Even with bows in her hair, Harley’s outfit is markedly “unfeminine”. And the thing is, Harley is usually a feminine, playful character. But in this story Harley isn’t allowed to be a feminine _character_ , only a feminine _image_. The same impulse explains the redesigned Joker making a similar pose in the background of the panel—Joker is not allowed to be feminine either.

The only remaining feminine expression in the story is Ivy, who in a twist from BTAS, is already incarcerated in Arkham before Harley becomes a villain.

As Harley watches Harvey Dent get disfigured on TV and then masked policemen carry out executions, she’s wearing only a red shirt and black underwear. Mostly tastefully portrayed until the final image of her “dream[s] of savage things” in which she’s sitting in the fountain Batman and Joker had fought in at the beginning of the story, facing the viewer. And though it’s still tame in terms of _shown_ nudity, there’s a very disturbing vulnerable cast to her here in having her lower half uncovered while in the middle of a faceless crowd. I think this image was meant to be disturbing. There’s a feeling of violation in the image, as Harleen says she remembers “the sound of cheers” and that the violence “all feels so familiar… so sinister.” Harleen is feeling fully alienated from society at this point, and in a sense I think the panel is justified, but I wonder if it’s _necessary_.

Harley visits the police precinct, waits and is disturbed knowing some of them have gone vigilante, and Gordon introduces her to Batman. I really liked this section of the story, though it doesn’t last long; it creates an unsettled feel and drives the plot forward at the same time, while epitomizing the theme of violence driving people to become violent. Then Batman appears, standing literally on top of the Batsignal, which is supposed to be awe-inspiring, and kind of is, but is also accidentally hilarious. Harleen asks Batman if he thinks there’s still hope for the villains, even Joker, and Batman says he hopes there is, and for himself. A nice little moment.

Then you have Harley talking to Joker about how degenerate Gotham society is, and for a story about a guy whose entire theme is jokes, I have to say, at this point… Joker’s not funny. In fact, he’s not even _trying_ to be. He might have some of the beliefs about chaos that Heath Ledger’s Joker has, but he doesn’t turn things into jokes. I appreciate that he and Harleen had a serious conversation, but I feel like something more could have been done. At the end of the conversation, Joker reveals that he didn’t kill Harley the night they met because he wanted to see her smile, which I actually liked. It was exactly the kind of dumb but plausible reveal that I could imagine Joker honestly giving for why he didn’t kill someone, and we know he has an obsession with making people he’s obsessed with (i.e. Batman) smile, though that’s never alluded to in this story.

After this, Harley sleeps alone in her big bed, clutching her purple sheet (nice foreshadowing there)—though she’s in some white underwear for no discernable reason. It’s a very boring titillation shot, because it’s just: ~look, skin and lingerie!~ while also seeming like a very uncomfortable outfit to sleep in. It would’ve been kind of fun, and add into the gothic horror vibe, if she was just sleeping in an oversized white t-shirt that had slipped up too far, and the purple sheet was making sure nothing was R-rated. Harley falls asleep and dreams about monsters wearing human faces as masks, which ought to be scary but doesn’t quite hit scary, and could perhaps be gruesomely funny but doesn’t quite hit that either. She dreams of an honest Joker, victim to the hypocritical monstrosity of society, which is kind of cool; and later we see that Joker has gotten info on Harley’s big societal theory and is consequently going to play right into her fantasies. Harley feels self-consciousness about smiling, in a very uncomfortable montage, and then she decides to do more criminal interviews.

The big one is Ivy. As Harley, bored out of her mind and no longer even thinking about helping anyone, daydreams about Joker, Ivy points out her arousal and asks if it’s her Harley is attracted to. Harley gets uncomfortable and leaves. There’s really something about this scene that disappoints, especially compared to their meeting in BTAS, where Harley helped Ivy out and they flirted a bit before becoming best friends. Here, instead you have an apathetic Harley and Ivy just comes across as evilly pathetic. Even so, Ivy cloaks her words in self-focused consideration (“I usually have to kiss someone to elicit such a response… so I’m wondering whether my abilities have… evolved”) so even though Ivy remains the only queer Gotham villain, which is hilarious considering, like, _all_ the Gotham villains are queer, she’s not allowed to be upfront about it.

Harley has a bit of a breakdown over Joker in the hallway, and then in the grand tradition of dark romances everywhere, decides to watch Joker sleep. Joker’s very sexily posed, which makes sense, because he’s not actually asleep. This whole scene was actually very fun in how it switched around the specifics of the trope, and I enjoyed it.

Harvey Dent wakes up in his hospital, goes out and talks on TV. Harley feels as though he’s speaking to her about the villains, saying the villains are remorseless monsters and can’t be helped. Harley almost believes it, but then remembers Joker’s moments of genuineness. Harley realizes she’s given up on treating Joker without ever asking him the right questions, and thinks about how attitudes of apathy and uncaring reinforce the idea that some people are monsters, cut and dried. She then goes to Joker and asks him if he’s ever felt remorse for his actions. Joker says sure, at first, but “the first victim of the streets of Gotham is one’s empathy” and we know he’s not telling the truth, because he read up on exactly what Harley wanted to hear.

This is one of the most interesting segments of the story, for sure, and brings up a lot of questions. In the end, the reader is going to be left without knowing for sure how genuine Joker has ever been or how right Harley ever was in regards to him, which is done _almost_ perfectly. Harley loses the upper hand here and Joker really begins stringing her along, then Harley unplugs the security camera, unties the Joker, and they hug. Well, Joker hugs her, in a creepy sort of way.

In chapter 3, Harley has terrified romantic daydreams about Joker. She manages to convince her superiors to let her leave the cameras off in their sessions, and she and Joker make out. We see the beginning of a teasing/bantering relationship between Joker & Harley, which is fun. Harvey and his bad cops decide to attack Arkham and kill inmates. Harley & Joker talk about the effects of his vat of acid fall, play go fish, and all in all seem to have a fairly fulfilling and equal relationship, as much as they can given all the ways everything between them is messed up by definition. Harley has renewed determination with her other patients, including giving Ivy a room with natural lighting. I like the implication that feeling cared for expanded Harley’s ability to care, although I’m not sure if that was the intended implication. After an altercation with Batman in the hallway, and fully believing that she’s going to be the one to save Joker, Harleen has sex with him. It’s actually done in quite a cute way. Then Harleen has more dreams featuring her hero-complex.

Harvey Dent breaks into Arkham and allows the villains to run amok as part of his big plan. Ivy magically loses all her clothes, which turn into artfully-placed leaves, in what is still not the most cringeworthy naked Ivy in comics. As Joker is getting broken out, he speaks to himself, “sorry, Harley, we gave it a try… but I guess you can’t teach a mad dog sane tricks!” which is the most interesting little moment, considering no one else is around when he says it, and seems to imply she might’ve actually been getting somewhere with him.

Harley runs into Arkham, into the carnage of cops letting out inmates so the inmates will kill people and the cops can justify killing them. Harley’s saved from Croc by Ivy. She then runs into Harvey and has a face-down with him where you really get insight into his motivation. Joker saves her, almost kills Harvey, but Harley stops him. _She actually stops him_. This is why the story almost hits as a tragedy: because Harley actually had managed to change Joker for the better. Harley tries to persuade Joker to give himself up to the authorities but Joker reminds her that these bad guys trying to kill him are cops so that would be, well, crazy of him.

Then Harley’s friend shows up, thinks she’s trying to help break Joker out of prison, and tries to kill Joker, and Harley shoots her friend without thinking. Harley has a mental breakdown, tells Joker she’s realized life is pointless, then they laugh and kiss. Later, Batman watches the security tapes, feels sorry for Harley and wishes he hadn’t led her to Joker and believed in her, because look what happened. He and Alfred argue about whether Joker and Harley loved each other, about the situation in Arkham and the police, and exactly who was at fault for the whole mess. The Batman portrayal is still one of the staler ones I’ve seen; you could predict what he was going to say almost beat for beat and though I got a huge sense of déjà-vu, I never saw anything in Batman’s character that seemed to give me any particular insight into him. He played a very stock role here. Still, the story seems set to end on a bit of thought-provoking note in general.

But then the last image is a nightmarish Harley facing the viewer while her past self screams in broken mirrors, and there’s clowns everywhere, and everything’s shown in an angle from below that again objectifies her, which I don’t really enjoy being the last page of the story. And it’s shown that Harley’s had a _lot_ of mental deterioration and basically is a victim who feels like she’s in a nightmare all the time—something _way_ more dark and depressing than BTAS, which is justified here by reaching into key moments from other comics, like Harley getting dunked in acid, and pulling them into this continuity. But to me, this highlights reel doesn’t quite hit the right note for _this_ story, which was, at its best, about what society does to people with violence and betrayal and why they might distrust help from people of authority—where Joker & Harley’s relationship was always played as skirting the edges of “healthy” and the Joker’s evilness is mostly inferred.

If the _point_ of the story is that Harley’s being taken in by him and that she’s going to become a shell of herself, Joker should have done worse things earlier on to justify her state here at the end—not necessarily _to_ Harley, but just in general. This just feels like a cop-out and a morality play, like a warning: don’t fall for the Joker or you’ll end up like _her_!

I know the ending is going to be grim, I mean it’s a Batman story, but there’s very little _fun_ in it, even though Harley supposedly “got the joke” about life being meaningless and that’s why she thinks its funny. It’s Harley’s version of “The Killing Joke” but without the same level of pathos, and she’s not allowed the full ascension into pure nihilistic, gleeful villainhood that Joker got in his version of the story, and which every other version of Harley I’ve seen, regardless of how much the writers blame the Joker for her situation, is allowed.

Okay, can I say it… not only is Batman kind of boring in this story, Joker is too. There’s an offhand line by one of the bad guy cops to Joker about him only killing people and Joker says that’s kind of one note, which it is, but… he _is_ one-note in this. And so are most of the other characters, with Harleen being one of the few exceptions.

_Harleen_ isn’t a nightmarish psychological horror like _Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth_ , or a tragicomedy like “Mad Love.” It’s a basic dark romance with a deconstructive twist at the end, which is disappointing, because it could have been a lot more. So… yeah. There was a lot of stuff I liked about it and much that I disliked, but it remains on the whole kind of “meh” because it never managed to cohere into anything either really good or really bad.


End file.
